When I picked her up the other day from a play date at her friend Chase’s, I noticed her back was stained green when she turned to gather her things.
My daughter, Paige, is always surprising, but I wasn’t expecting her to say that it was guacamole.
When I asked her how one goes about getting a large amount of guacamole on their back by their shoulder blades, her answer was even more unexpected:
“A virtual reality ‘Oculus Incident.”
Because, of course it was.
Her closet is a nightmare.
Cascading clothes are everywhere you look.
I am fairly certain it could be submitted as a school science experiment.
I’m keeping the idea of that tucked away for the day she comes home with a packet of science fair information. “I’ve got the perfect project! I knew this day would come!”
I deep cleaned it a few weeks ago, and found half a flute behind her dresser.
No one plays the flute here.
When I ask her to do chores, she often says she’s “too sore” for things.
I don’t know what a modern eleven year old even has to be sore from.
She’s not raising barns, or walking miles through harsh conditions for pitchers of drinking water;
She’s playing video games.
If anything should be sore, it’s her thumbs.
But there is something about Paige that is more than what you first see:
That stained, sometimes disaster of a child looks beyond what you are saying with your words, and sees to the heart of things.
It’s a gift you might miss if you’re distracted by thing like Mowgli hair,
or a wayward Nutella smudge.
Countless times when I’ve been sad, angry, secretly hopeful, or overwhelmed,
it has been her small hand suddenly slipped into mine and piercing eye contact that has let me know she was in tune with it, when I thought no one else could see;
Whatever it was, she was there for it.
It was her and me.
I guess I pictured all soul mates, and life partners to mean romantic relationships,
but the older I get, and the longer I raise these four girls of mine,
I have begun to change how I view that.
Each one, at one time or another, has been “The One.”
The one to make me laugh when I most needed laughter,
The one to join me on my bed and nuzzle me as grief sweeps in a wave,
The one to quietly help me pick up the pieces,
The one with a knowing nod,
The one who sees.
Some of the deepest, most seen-for-who-I-am moments of my life have come from a now eleven year old girl in a band T-shirt that barely knows where the trash can is,
and the wonder of that beautiful fact is not lost on me.
It teaches me, once again, to look past first impressions.
She’s not always Mowgli.
Paige stayed home from school today after she injured her arm in P.E. yesterday going too hard on some push-ups, no doubt, once again trying to prove that she is the Chuck Norris of her elementary.
This meant she was here when the blood work results I had been waiting on came,
and I sat pouring over all of the red flags on them, furrow lines on my face.
Right away she picked up on that I was looking at something distressing, and she came to me, and asked me what I was concerned with, and I told her, “I’ve got some stuff going on with my health.”
First, she wrapped her own injured arms around me tight, and then she began saying as she did, “It’s a good thing we have doctors here to help us, don’t you think?
I’m sure they know exactly what to do to fix all this. I know you’re going to be OK.”
The thing about Paige’s way of loving me is that she’s one of the top people whose way actually helps. She knows what makes me feel better. She knows what I need.
Sometimes the shortest arms are the best at reaching things.
Paige hugs first, and then while you’re wrapped up tight, feeling seen and comforted,
she whispers words that let you know you are cared about, she encourages while giving honor to the pain you carry, and without minimizing it, she reminds you to look at the positive.
I clung to her today in that moment, tears streaming, thinking, “Of all the days for her to be home…”
It’s in these little details I feel the presence of God most tangibly.
In the reminders that I’m never alone.
In my child’s face, looking into me.
I told her then, “It’s time for me to focus on my health really seriously,” and her very first response was to quietly disappear into the kitchen to cut me up an apple –
Such a simple seeming thing.
She knows what they say about one-a-day of them, even if that apple cutter really does take a lot out of sore Chuck Norris arms.
I watched her pressing it with the tip of her tongue out, and a smile fought its way through the worry onto my face.
As she placed the apple I hadn’t even asked for in front of me,
I thought then about what would make an eleven year old even know how to give that kind of quiet, nurturing love, and what would make them do whatever it takes to let others see that they are known,
and I realized that has been the whole point all along.
Mothering them has been about teaching through my own loving actions towards them, so that they will love that way in return, and hopefully teach another, and the ripple will continue on.
It’s about creating a future full of hope, speckled with seers, who help smooth what feels rough.
I pray that I always remember the lessons taught by my eleven year old:
That sometimes the one with the guacamole back will surprise you.
That sometimes there are gifts inside a person that you wouldn’t expect, even if the outside of them occasionally appears homeless.
It’s about more than being brought an apple.
It always was.
Sometimes it’s what that apple says about love.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
